The Semiotics of Discourse

236 Pages·01.669 MB·English

by  Jacques Fontanille

62
B E R K E L E Y
I N S I G H T S
BF
oo
sn IN LINGUISTICS
t
it
Jacques Fontanille’s The Semiotics of Discoursefills a long- c,a AND SEMIOTICS
T n
standing need for a clear, comprehensive overview of R i
narrative semiotic theory. The book skillfully blends a historical A ll 62
N e
perspective with an emphasis on recent developments. S
.
Outstanding features include a clear, thorough exposition;
numerous examples drawn from sports, cooking, and
T
literature; a balance of introductory overview and detailed
analysis; figures that graphically represent the ideas h
expressed; and suggestions for further reading at the end of e
each chapter. The book will be of interest to both scholars and
S
students in semiotics, linguistics, literary theory, and the study
e
of narrative.
m
Jacques Fontanilleis President of the Université de Limoges
i
in France, where he is also Professor of Linguistics and o
Semiotics. He holds the Chair in Semiotics at the Institut t
i
Universitaire de France. He is the author of several books, c
including Le Savoir partagé (1987), Sémiotique du visible s
(1995), Sémiotique et littérature(1999), and Soma & séma
o
(2004). He is co-author, with Algirdas Julien Greimas, of The
f
Semiotics of Passions (1993) and co-author, with Claude
D
Zilberberg, ofTension et signification(1998).
i
s
Heidi Bostic holds a Ph.D. in French from Purdue University
c
in Indiana and a Diplôme d’études approfondies en Sciences
o
du langage from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences
u
Sociales in France. She is Assistant Professor of Romance
r
Languages and Gender Studies at Michigan Technological
s
University. She is the author of several articles on French
e
literature, feminist theory, and semiotics. Her published
translations include Luce Irigaray’s book The Way of Love
(2003). THE SEMIOTICS
DISCOURSE
OF
WWW.PETERLANG.COM
P JACQUES FONTANILLE
E
T
E
R
TRANSLATED BY HEIDI BOSTIC
L
A
N
G
62
B E R K E L E Y
I N S I G H T S
BF
oo
sn IN LINGUISTICS
t
it
Jacques Fontanille’s The Semiotics of Discoursefills a long- c,a AND SEMIOTICS
T n
standing need for a clear, comprehensive overview of R i
narrative semiotic theory. The book skillfully blends a historical A ll 62
N e
perspective with an emphasis on recent developments. S
.
Outstanding features include a clear, thorough exposition;
numerous examples drawn from sports, cooking, and
T
literature; a balance of introductory overview and detailed
analysis; figures that graphically represent the ideas h
expressed; and suggestions for further reading at the end of e
each chapter. The book will be of interest to both scholars and
S
students in semiotics, linguistics, literary theory, and the study
e
of narrative.
m
Jacques Fontanilleis President of the Université de Limoges
i
in France, where he is also Professor of Linguistics and o
Semiotics. He holds the Chair in Semiotics at the Institut t
i
Universitaire de France. He is the author of several books, c
including Le Savoir partagé (1987), Sémiotique du visible s
(1995), Sémiotique et littérature(1999), and Soma & séma
o
(2004). He is co-author, with Algirdas Julien Greimas, of The
f
Semiotics of Passions (1993) and co-author, with Claude
D
Zilberberg, ofTension et signification(1998).
i
s
Heidi Bostic holds a Ph.D. in French from Purdue University
c
in Indiana and a Diplôme d’études approfondies en Sciences
o
du langage from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences
u
Sociales in France. She is Assistant Professor of Romance
r
Languages and Gender Studies at Michigan Technological
s
University. She is the author of several articles on French
e
literature, feminist theory, and semiotics. Her published
translations include Luce Irigaray’s book The Way of Love
(2003). THE SEMIOTICS
DISCOURSE
OF
WWW.PETERLANG.COM
P JACQUES FONTANILLE
E
T
E
R
TRANSLATED BY HEIDI BOSTIC
L
A
N
G
The Semiotics
of Discourse
B E R K E L E Y
I N S I G H T S
I N LINGUISTICS
AND SEMIOTICS

Irmengard Rauch
General Editor

Vol. 62

PETER LANG
New York ! Washington, D.C./Baltimore ! Bern
Frankfurt am Main ! Berlin ! Brussels ! Vienna ! Oxford
Jacques Fontanille

The Semiotics
of Discourse

TRANSLATED BY
Heidi Bostic

PETER LANG
New York ! Washington, D.C./Baltimore ! Bern
Frankfurt am Main ! Berlin ! Brussels ! Vienna ! Oxford
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Fontanille, Jacques.
[Semiotique du discours. English]
The semiotics of discourse / Jacques Fontanille; translated by Heidi Bostic.
p. cm. — (Berkeley insights in linguistics and semiotics; vol. 62)
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Semiotics. 2. Discourse analysis. I. Title. II. Series: Berkeley insights
in linguistics and semiotics; v. 62.
P99.F66413 401’.41—dc22 2006000643
ISBN 978-0-8204-8619-2 (hardback)
ISBN 978­1­4539­0954­6 (eBook)
ISSN 0893-6935

Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Bibliothek.
Die Deutsche Bibliothek lists this publication in the “Deutsche
Nationalbibliografie”; detailed bibliographic data is available
on the Internet at http://dnb.ddb.de/.

The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability
of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity
of the Council of Library Resources.

© 2006, 2007 Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., New York
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All rights reserved.
Reprint or reproduction, even partially, in all forms such as microfilm,
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Printed in Germany
Of all comparisons that might be imagined, the most fruitful is the one that might be
drawn between the functioning of language and a game of chess. In both instances we are
confronted with a system of values and their observable modifications. A game of chess is
like an artificial realization of what language offers in a natural form.
Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics

Contents
Translator’s Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .xi
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv
Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvii
Chapter 1: From the Sign to Discourse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
0. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1. Sign and Signification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.1. The Diversity of Approaches to Meaning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.2. Theories of the Sign . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2. Perception and Signification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.1. Elements to Remember . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.2. The Two Planes of a Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.3. The Sensible and the Intelligible . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Chapter 2: The Elementary Structures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23
0. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
1. The Binary Structures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
1.1. The Privative Opposition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
1.2. The Opposition Between Contraries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
2. The Semiotic Square . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
2.1. The Constitutive Relations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
2.2. The Elementary Syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
2.3. Axiological Polarization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
2.4. Second-Generation Terms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
3. The Ternary Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
3.1. The Three Levels of Apprehension of Phenomena . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
3.2. Properties of the Three Levels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
3.3. Modes of Existence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
viii The Semiotics of Discourse
4. The Tensive Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
4.1. Problems in Suspense . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
4.2 New Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
4.3. The Dimensions of the Sensible . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
4.4. The Correlation Between the Two Dimensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
4.5. The Two Types of Correlation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
4.6. From Valences to Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
4.7. Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
Chapter 3: Discourse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .45
0. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
1. Text, Discourse, and Narrative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
1.1. The Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
1.2. Discourse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
1.3. Narrative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
1.4. Text and Discourse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
1.5. Narrative and Discourse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
2. The Instance of Discourse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
2.1. The Taking of Position . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
2.2. Gagement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
2.3. The Positional Field . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
3. Discursive Schemas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
3.1. Schemas of Tension . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
3.2. Canonical Schemas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
3.3. The Syntax of Discourse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
Chapter 4: Actants, Actors, and Modalities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .95
0. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
1. Actants and Actors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
1.1. Actants and Predicates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
1.2. Trajectories of Identity, Roles, and Attitudes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
1.3. Actants and Actors of the Sentence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
2. Transformational Actants and Positional Actants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
2.1. Transformation and Discursive Orientation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
2.2. Positional Actants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
2.3. Transformational Actants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
2.4. The Positional Field and the Predicative Scene . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
3. Modalities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
3.1. The Modality as Predicate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
3.2. Modalization as Passional Imaginary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118